Once upon a time I found myself accidentally (it’s a long story!) taking part in an aerobics class at a gym. I can’t say that I was particularly good (i.e., in time to the music) but it was good fun and really energetic. More recently I returned to a dance studio but this time thankfully in a less active role – taking photos.

With Zumba Fitness seemingly taking the fitness industry by storm there are classes popping up all over the country (and no doubt the world). On a Monday night in Twickenham classes take place in the function room of the London Road pub and are taught by Alexandra Tyas. I was asked to go along to one of the classes to get some photos of Alexandra ‘in action’ that would be used to help promote her Zumba business.

Now when you go to a gym/fitness class you don’t expect to see a photographer there taking photos of you so when I was introduced as “the man at the back of the room with the camera” there was a shuffling as attendees either moved to the other side of the room or practiced breathing in and holding their breath! There was no reason for them to panic as Alexandra then said that I’d be photographing her and not specifically any individuals within the class. The music then started and the class began.

Wow, is all could say. Really energetic and exciting. You don’t need to be super fit to go (but it helps) and if you’ve got no sense of direction then it really doesn’t matter – as long as you enjoy yourself (which it’s hard not to) then you’re more than welcome to go along to a class.

Here’s a few photographs from the shoot and if you want to find out more about Zumba classes in Twickenham then you’d definitely not go wrong by checking out Alexandra’s classes at the London Road pub.

As part of the seemingly ever increasing number of supplements and sections within weekend newspapers the ‘Telegraph Mens Style’ magazine which was included as part of the 24th March 2012 issue of the Telegraph newspaper (UK) there was a half page feature about parkrun (“The Saturday-morning running club that is the choice of champions”) which included one of our photographs from Bushy parkrun.

The Telegraph newspaper has around 600,000+ readers every day so hopefully this will get a few more people signing up to different parkrun events around the country over the coming weeks. There will then no doubt be another increase in registrations shortly after the London Marathon in four weeks time when people turn around and think to themselves “I could do this…”